The pollsters are still scratching their heads over “one of the most significant miscues in modern polling history”, but Andrew Kohut (President of the Pew Research Center) has a unique theory. Essentially, Kohut believes poor white voters fib to pollsters about their support for black candidates. If that’s really the case, will Obama’s poll numbers always be inflated?
Read Getting It Wrong, NYTimes Op-Ed by Andrew Kohut
To my mind all these factors deserve further study. But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.
Related links from Pew:
New Hampshire Teaches News Media a Lesson
Can You Trust What Polls Say about Obama’s Electoral Prospects?
5 Responses to Sorting out New Hampshire
Help Daniel
It was the diebold optical scanner machines that gave the election to Clinton /snark
I’m not a rigged voting machine guy but it could happen.
In truth. Of all the electronic voting machines, this is the easiest one to verify since you have paper ballots. However, some states only require you to rerun the ballots through the machines for a recount. It should be a manual recount and running them through the machines. Most places do not do any kind of load testing when they certify the machines which does all the possibility of modifying the code to switch X votes every 100, 200, ect. votes
That theory is somewhat undercut by the fact that the pollsters got Obama’s vote share correct and only underestimated Clinton’s.
See here.
Richard – Yup. The Obama camp has confirmed that they were expecting about 37 – 38% based on their turnout models.
My guess is that most of the 5 percent that Edwards lost was women who voted for Clinton.
I too am skeptical, if only because of the awkward retroactive-continuity explanation for the Iowa result. My guess is that New Hampshire voters are just cantankerous, contrarian old coots who don’t like to be told what they’re gonna do.
Interesting…Officials in N.H. agree to recount primary vote
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/12/officials_in_nh_agree_to_recount_primary_vote/
Does this mean that the talk about Diebold will quiet down if nothing is suspicious is found?
Kucinich is going to pay the entire bill on the Democratic side. I support him in this effort. I doubt they will find anything but I have to admit I am curious.